


like some watcher of the skies

by afterism



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Character Study, Elliott's charm offensive, Festivals, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Touch-Starved, liberal use of canon dialogue, sebastian's help wanted notices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29386065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: "I find speaking out loud inexpressibly useful when I'm trying to work something out," Elliott says.After a moment, Sebastian says, "Sometimes I throw old vegetables at the mountain face."
Relationships: Elliott/Sebastian (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	like some watcher of the skies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimosa-supernova (FourCatProductions)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourCatProductions/gifts).



> I had never really considered these two until I saw your prompt! And then all these feelings happened. Thank you for the inspiration, and I dearly hope you enjoy this :D

"The young man stood on the docks, the rain plastering his raven-black hair to his alabaster skin as he watched the dark clouds and thought about... as he thought about... hmm."

Elliot taps the end of his pen against the page.

 _Write what you know_ , all the advice said. _See things from a different perspective_ , an old magazine he found at the library had suggested. _Just paint what you see_ , Leah had told him. _Wait, no, not like that_ , she had said, laughing as she wrestled the paintbrush out of his hand, accidentally dragging a bright green smear across his tentative dabs that had, in his humble opinion, greatly improved them.

 _I'll stick to writing_ , Elliott had promised. Enough false starts. His mystery novel had veered towards fantasy again, and he had hoped watching real life might drag him back to earth.

Hence, sitting here in his cabin, listening to the rain pattering and hammering on the roof, and where — if he cranes his head and presses his face close enough to the glass that it fogs up from the heat of his skin — he can see the carpenter's son standing at the end of the jetty.

The boy from the mountains, he thinks, finding his pen, and then frowns and lets his fingers rest on top of it, unused. That makes him sound like a wild, untamed creature. The man standing on the jetty just looks damp and lonely.

"As he thought about..." Elliott murmurs, pursing his lips for a moment before the expression slips. Well. There's one way to find out how that sentence finishes.

Elliott casts around for an umbrella — he had one, didn't he? He'd taken it to Leah's last week in that storm and _fuck_ left it there — before looking in turn at an empty plant pot, that huge blank journal, and his one good coat.

Perhaps his hair is due a wash, anyway. This autumn rain doesn't have the violence of the summer storms, but it washes across the landscape in drowning sheets and leaves no unwary traveller unsoaked. Few people pass by the beach on days like this.

The rain seems to get heavier as he pulls on his coat and stands by his front door, hammering louder. It's early enough in the season to not be too cold, but this is a bad idea, isn't it?

The empty page beckons. Elliott exhales, sharp and annoyed in the way he only allows himself to be when alone, and opens the cabin door.

The seagulls that loiter behind the fish shop launch into the air with a clatter of bellowing and wings, soaring up with an ease that blows across the embers of some deep envy in Elliott's chest. Nothing's coming _easy_ for him, lately — which was the point, that's why he moved here, but it hasn't materialised into the flow of words that his ego promised.

At least trudging across the wet sand requires so much effort that he's distracted for the half-minute it takes to reach the docks. The smell of salt and fish and seaweed is stronger here, cut through with the tang of wet concrete and old wood that he's growing inexplicably fond of, and Elliott's footsteps ripple down the boards. The young man — _Sebastian?_ Elliott thinks, fairly certain they've been introduced at one of the town's many festivals — doesn't react at all. Perhaps he has headphones on.

He doesn't react when Elliott comes to a stop beside him at the end of the jetty, either. It's a few moments before Elliott inclines his head to look, and finds Sebastian glaring at him out of the corner of his eye.

"Did you want something?" Sebastian asks, every line of his face unfriendly.

Elliott smiles, despite the cold water finding new routes down his back. "I was curious about what would cause a young man to stand in such dreary weather, contemplating such a foreboding scene?"

Sebastian frowns and looks away, and huddles into himself; hunching his shoulders tighter, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets.

"I like being alone," he says, looking out at the white-flecked waves.

Elliott sees the hint, considers it for a moment, and lets it fly away unimpeded.

"A surprisingly hard thing to find, in such a rural place."

Sebastian makes a noise that could, generously, be called a laugh. "Tell me about it," he says.

The rain hammers harder for a few seconds, the squall flicking the waves up into biting sprays, and, seeing as he has no other options, Elliott tips his head back and lets the moment soak in.

"Do you ever just want to... escape everything in your life and go be a different person?" Sebastian says quietly, like he's hoping it will be lost under the rain, like he's not expecting an answer.

Elliott's mouth twitches. "Yes," he says, simply.

"What do you do?"

"Personally? I filled a very small suitcase with enough clothes for three days and moved to Pelican Town, but I feel that's a little extreme for most people."

Sebastian looks at him, properly. The rain really has plastered his hair to his face, a landscape of shadows as wet and choppy as the sea.

"You're kidding."

"I am not." Elliott looks back, holding his gaze. "Is there something in particular you want to get away from?"

Sebastian sighs, pulls a face, waves one hand in the air. "No. It's just... everything. I'm just so exhausted from having to be around people all the time," he says, and then glances at Elliott and ducks his head, suddenly fascinated by something off to his right.

"Sorry," Sebastian adds, almost lost to the rain. "I don't even know you."

Elliott shrugs, even though Sebastian isn't looking at him.

"I find speaking out loud inexpressibly useful when I'm trying to work something out," Elliott says.

After a moment, Sebastian says, "Sometimes I throw old vegetables at the mountain face."

Elliott laughs, and catches sight of Sebastian's fleeting smile out of the corner of his eye, like the cracking open of the city gates. Elliott shoves his foot in the door.

"I saw some shells up on the beach, if you want to throw things at the ocean."

The smile briefly returns, but Sebastian shrugs, shakes his head. "Nah, thanks," he says.

"Ah," Elliott says. "Not in a throwing-things kind of mood?"

There's a pause, like Sebastian's sorting through the insults he does want to throw, and then he says, "Yeah, something like that."

"Take a deep breath," Elliott says, and catches Sebastian looking at him askance. "Indulge me. Standing here, breathing in the smell of the ocean... how does it make you feel?"

Silence. Elliott looks and finds Sebastian's eyes are closed, his head tipped slightly back so the rain can patter across his cheeks, his eyelids, his mouth, and Elliott thinks, _my goodness, you are lovely_. It's the first time he's really _looked_ at Sebastian; has always had the vague impression of a pale face behind a curtain of hair, a shadow at the edge of the town festivals. Up close he's older than Elliott first guessed, his jawline sharp, his eyelashes long and sweeping, and Elliott catches himself thinking of poetry, of a stargazer seeing a new planet for the first time, of the last time he looked at someone and wanted.

He shakes it off.

"It feels different down here," Sebastian says, catching his lower lip between his teeth before he opens his eyes, and finds Elliott looking at him. He ducks his head. "Like, I know this town isn't the beginning and end of the world, you know? That one day I might get out."

"I have no doubt you will," Elliott says, with an easy kindness that almost resembles truth.

Sebastian glances at him again, that slight furrow back between his brows like he's trying to figure out what sound Elliott would make if he threw him against the mountain wall.

"Thanks," Sebastian says eventually, the frown not clearing.

The rain hasn't let up at all — Elliott shifts his weight and finds his toes are squelching within his shoes — and when the wind changes for a beat it slaps across their faces so hard they both flinch. A seagull lands briefly in the water before disappearing behind the swells.

Elliott thinks longingly of his dark, close cabin, where at least the wind has to fight through the gaps in the window frames before it can savage you. Next to him, Sebastian is staring out to sea again like he could spot the Fern Islands if he waits long enough, like a camera shutter letting the light pour in, and Elliott's thoughts skip into sentences, imagery lining up in his fingertips.

He almost turns, shooting off to find his pen again without another word, but — it would be rude to slouch off to shelter without extending an invitation, wouldn't it? Elliott opens his mouth, closes it, remembers that every lingering regret he holds dear are the things he didn't do, and clears his throat:

"My cabin is a short walk away, if you'd like to dry off a little before you head home," he says. That said, the rain doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon; will probably carry on until sometime early in the morning. Sometimes Elliott finds himself awake at 4am after a day of rain and steps outside to watch the last of the clouds flee, the stars opening up above him.

A ripple of annoyance travels across Sebastian's mouth, and Elliott's _another time_ is on the tip of his tongue when Sebastian flicks the wet hair out of his eyes with an irritated jerk of his head and says, "Yeah, that would be great."

"Marvellous," Elliott says, allowing his surprise to spread bright and pleased across his face, and leads the way. They walk side by side, matching each other's strides in a hesitant, self-correcting kind of way, their shoulders bumping once or twice in the short walk.

Elliott is jolted into thinking about the last time he took someone home; an impression of rain streaming across the cab windows, street lamps and shop signs blurring into supernovas, stubble against his mouth, hands tangled in his hair. His mouth tastes sour when he thinks about it, but the comparison almost makes him laugh: this sodden twenty-something scowling beside him as they hurry towards the second-best shelter on this grey-tinted beach. His chest feels lighter than he had ever known possible.

(It's the reminder he needed to realise he hasn't missed it, the soft skin of strangers, the emptiness of the lights. He has, perhaps, missed the connections he felt — not his equally vain friends but the strangers he met in art galleries, in wine bars, the one-night conversations that ended with only hands pressed together and mouths no closer than cheeks. The worlds that could explode into being and contract back to nothing but warm memories in the space of an evening.)

The wind helps throw open the cabin door, and nostalgia can wait until he no longer has company. They slop in, Elliott peeling off his coat with a grimace as Sebastian runs a hand through his hair and makes the same face.

"There's a dry towel here, somewhere," Elliott says, wondering if taking off his boots and introducing his feet to the floor would make things better or worse, and squelches over to the tiny bathroom that's only one step up from an outhouse. He leaves the door ajar behind him, deliberately not looking in the mirror because he knows it will only horrify him, and strips off as much as possible while still being decent.

Which means shoes and then socks and then nothing else, followed by a darting glance towards the mirror that is immediately regretted as his mental image of windswept romanticism drowns without hope. He scrubs at his exposed skin with the less-clean towel and picks up the best one, considering it for a strange, suspended moment before blinking hard, and stepping back into the main room.

Sebastian is standing by his writing desk, dripping indiscriminately onto the floor. The single lantern Elliott left burning makes a kind of reverse oasis out of the corner, golden warmth among all the watery greyness, and Sebastian seems to be staring at the single paragraph staining the white page. Elliott goes very hot, suddenly.

"Oh! Ah — I'm, I was, er..." he says, uselessly.

Sebastian looks up, half-haloed by the light, and gold glints in the corner of his smile. Elliott's heart kicks into a different gear. _Oh, dear_ , he thinks, and swallows.

"You make me sound so... cool and mysterious," Sebastian says, his voice warm as summer rain, a flush to his cheeks that might have nothing to do with his soaked clothes and the cold cabin.

"I'm very glad you think so," Elliott says, letting the raw truth slip like something casual, and crosses over to hand Sebastian the towel. He glances down at his own words as Sebastian dries his face, the _thought about_ craning over the edge of nothingness.

Well. If his muse is right here and interested...

"How should that sentence end?" Elliott asks, as Sebastian finishes squeezing out his fringe.

Sebastian looks at the page again, then off to a corner of the ceiling, mouth pulling to the side as he thinks.

"Thought about... new beginnings?" Sebastian tries, and immediately winces. "Yoba, no. Death. Adventure. What lurked in the caverns near his house."

Elliott moves, an involuntary tilt of his head like that idea has more weight than it looks, setting off an avalanche of possibilities. Fantasy it is, then, he thinks — the valley does keep trying to drip its magic into his words like the rain through the shingles above him. Perhaps he should just embrace it.

"That has potential," he says, distracted and half-lost in ancient halls.

"Cool," Sebastian says, and when Elliott resurfaces to the light he finds Sebastian further away than he remembered, looking less pleased than he did a minute ago.

"Forgive me," Elliott says, blinking away the phantoms. "Spending all your time in your own imagination can be a curse."

Sebastian shrugs, and Elliott is horrified by his own selfishness, by the chasm opening between them.

"It's getting dark, I should go," Sebastian says, as Elliott flounders for how to apologise.

The best he can offer is... all this. "Come visit me if you ever need a break. I could use the company," he says, truthfully.

"Sure," Sebastian says, clearly not believing him, and is gone in the time it takes to hand back the towel and throw his damp hood over his hair. The wind slams the cabin door shut the moment Sebastian lets go.

 _Ten seconds of self-pity_ , Elliott tells himself, but the mines of his imagination are closing rapidly, and he throws himself back at his writing desk to catch them before it slips away.

Ah, well. He came here to write, didn't he?

\---

Spirit's Eve, and Sebastian watches the skeletons rattle around in their cage and wishes, not for the first time, that he had the courage to ask Marlon about them. The only time they've ever spoken was when Marlon found him smoking near the entrance to the mines, and told him he wouldn't last two minutes down there with lungs like his. Every time Sebastian thinks of asking him about the Guild that memory creeps up and chokes him.

Sam tried, once, but Marlon just stared at him with his one good eye until Sam withered and slunk off. No one else is interested, apparently.

Except — huh.

Elliott is talking to him. Sebastian hadn't even noticed him arrive. Elliott's mostly turned away from him, but he can see his hands gesturing as he talks, and the edge of his smile, and the way Marlon's lips definitely move in response to something Elliott says.

 _Fucking how?_ he thinks, and then Elliott turns around with a sweep of hair, and Sebastian realises he's been staring. Elliott's face does something fascinating, going from tight and annoyed to bright and open in an instant, like a blanket being shaken out.

"Sebastian!" Elliott says, walking over. "It's a lovely evening, isn't it? Such a delicious chill in the air."

"What were you talking about?" Sebastian asks, nodding back towards where Marlon is lurking, scowling at everyone who walks past like they're going to high-jump into the cage.

"I was asking him about what kinds of things an intrepid adventurer might discover in the mines," Elliott says, slipping his hands into his pockets.

"What did he say?"

"He told me to keep my fingers away from the bars," Elliott says, his mouth going tight again. "But! A writer's imagination can be bound by no cage. Although I will respect this one," he adds, darting a glance towards the skeleton that's shuffled closer, its joints clicking. The red lights in its eye sockets are as small and piercing as starlight. 

"I snuck down there once," Sebastian says, feeling bold.

"Really?" Elliott says, looking delighted. "What was it like?"

"Er," Sebastian says, his bravado evaporating as swiftly as smoke. "Dark, I guess? I didn't get very far before something attacked me." He rubs the back of his calf with his foot, the faint scar suddenly itching, and catches the disappointment in the slope of Elliott's mouth before he looks away.

"Are you alright?" Elliott asks, sounding genuinely concerned. _Huh._

"Oh! Yeah, I'm fine, it was just a scratch."

"I'm very glad to hear it," Elliott says, smiling warmly when Sebastian glances up.

"If you ever wanted to go down there, I'd go with you," Sebastian finds himself inexplicably saying, and Elliott looks, for a moment, so utterly horrified that Sebastian has to press his lips together to stop himself laughing, and instead makes a kind of unattractive snorting noise.

Elliott looks chagrined. "Thank you for the offer, but I will explore from the safety of my cabin, with my pen as both sword and shield," he says, turning his head to watch the skeletons.

 _And this is why I never talk to anyone at these things_ , Sebastian thinks, feeling cold, and wonders if he should go and find Sam in the maze. It would mean he could smoke without his mom trying to catch his eye and make disappointed faces at him. How rude would it be to just leave?

There's a weird heat on the side of his face. Sebastian glances to the side and finds Elliott watching him, a thoughtful quirk to his mouth.

"Do let me know if you ever explore the caves again. I'd be fascinated to hear your impressions."

He sounds like he means it, too. Sebastian stares, his mouth caught half-open as he tries to come up with a response to that, what does that even _mean_ , and Elliott's gaze slips past and hooks on something behind him.

"Oh, there's Leah, I must introduce her to this pumpkin ale," he says, smiling at him like a floodlight and putting his hand on Sebastian's shoulder, just for a second, before heading off, and Sebastian is left feeling dazzled and wrong-footed and like he wants to put his hand precisely where Elliott put his, like he could press down and preserve it.

\---

"Does this look like a tail to you?" Leah asks, eyeing her ice sculpture.

"No," Elliott says, truthfully. "It looks like the potential of the ocean, of the moment a wave crests between its peak and its destruction."

"Hmm," Leah says, and reaches up the brush off the ice shavings. "I wasn't really aiming for abstract."

"You have only just started," Elliott points out. Her ice block is, well — she's started carving it, but to him it still looks like a giant column of frozen water. Elliott wishes he could see it as Leah does: an object d'art waiting to be released, the structure and the balance and the empty spaces where she needs to chisel away.

He is, perhaps, a little jealous of her skill. But, then again, in this weather he would rather be standing to the side and tucking his hands under his armpits than hammering at ice.

"I haven't got the form right yet," Leah says, her mouth twisting to the side, and Elliott has known her long enough to know that she's talking to herself, really, and he is no longer needed. It's fine; understanding the artistic temperament and the way your work can possess you is half the reason they get on so well.

It's still early. The Festival of Ice isn't officially open yet, but half the village is here to set up and Elliott is always happy to watch the rhythms of this community, even if he doesn't feel like he's part of it yet. The deep snow has made the forest unrecognisable, flattening out the landscape, and the early morning light is pouring cobalt in the footprints of the villagers and the shadows of the trees. The air's so sharp and clean he can feel it burning his lungs, chasing out the last dregs of city air.

Elliott looks up, to the blazing blue sky that seems all the brighter for the dazzling snow, nothing but trees at the edge of his vision, and wonders if perhaps he should mingle instead of watching Leah make her ideal woman out of ice. There might be marshmallows by the firepits.

Footsteps, behind him. The snow is thin and icy back there, caught in the valley that cuts north up into the old farm, and as far as Elliott is aware no one else has come that way — it looked pristine when he arrived, having followed the trail past the ranch like everyone else.

He turns, and Maru appears from behind the sharp edge of the hill, and then Robin and her husband, and he catches Robin saying, "Oh no, Leah's already started," as she and her family pass him and traipse into the clearing.

They head straight for the centre of activity, and Sebastian's not with them. How absurd, to feel disappointed.

He watches them for a few moments, and then glances back for no reason at all — and finds Sebastian a few yards away, staring at him. There's a pleasing flush to his cheeks, but even Elliott's ego must admit that's probably due to the walk through the snow.

Something in Elliott's chest shifts, lightens, regardless.

"Uh, hi," Sebastian says, his expression undecipherable.

"Sebastian!" Elliott says, and knows his voice is perhaps too warm for how little they know each other. Ah, well. "How wonderful to see you."

Sebastian's mouth does something complicated, a wrestle of a smile and disbelief, before settling flat.

"Yeah, you too," Sebastian says, quiet and awkward. He looks like he wants to hurry past; perhaps he got caught up and wants to go find his family before they scatter into the festivities.

Elliott, selfishly, is not going to make it that easy.

"I haven't seen you at the beach recently," he ventures.

"Yeah," Sebastian says, shrugging. "I don't go down there that much in winter."

"Yes, few do," Elliott sighs. "It does get lonely."

Sebastian ducks his head, looks away, although there's a curious warmth in his cheeks. _Perhaps_ , Elliott thinks.

"I meant it, you know," he says, waiting for Sebastian to look up again before he continues. "You'd be very welcome at my cabin, if you ever need a break."

"Thanks," Sebastian says, and then, "Yeah, maybe," he adds, looking over towards the ice sculptures. Robin's getting out her tools, a crease set hard across her eyebrows. Leah's lost in her work, carving curves out of the ice. No one's near the blob-with-sunglasses that was already finished when Elliott arrived.

The clearing is loud with the sound of hammering and laughter and chatting, a constant buzz above the soft snow. Sebastian is still yards away.

"I'm afraid I've been terribly rude," Elliott says, just to snag his attention, and smiles when Sebastian looks at him. "I've never asked what you do."

"Oh!" Sebastian says, surprised, and huddles into his hoodie for a beat. "I'm a freelance programmer."

"A writer!" Elliott proclaims. "I knew it."

Sebastian blinks, his expression like iridescence, never quite settling on a single colour. "I mean... kind of? No one's ever called me that. It's code, not... words," he says, and his mouth twists.

"You bend the universe to your will with language. I can admire that, no matter what you call it," Elliott says lightly, as Sebastian frowns. He does that a lot around him, Elliott's noticed.

"Thanks?" Sebastian says, and the thread of the conversation flutters away. The festival, at least, is going well; a revel of snowmen are appearing south of the ranch, and someone has dotted igloos across the landscape, little sanctuaries in the cold. People are starting to gather at the edge of the frozen lake and there's the scent of something spiced and smoky in the air, like a memory of charred apples.

"Are you entering any of the festivities today?" Elliott asks.

"Nah, I'll probably just hang with Sam..." he says, and glances over. "You?"

"I thought I'd try my hand at the ice fishing."

"Huh," Sebastian says, looking faintly surprised, and Elliot has the sudden, baseless idea that there's something important he's missed. "Is this your first winter here?" he asks, which doesn't help.

"Yes, I moved here in the spring." Elliott tilts his head, remembering his first town festival, his fascination with how quaint this little village could be. "I believe I'd known Leah for all of three minutes before she insisted that I do the flower dance with her, just so she wouldn't have to... how did she put it? 'Endure the grumpy blacksmith glaring at her all day.'"

Sebastian snorts, narrowing his eyes like he's trying to remember. "I don't — did you?"

"Well, I offered to dance with him instead, but he became so tongue-tied that Leah had to drag me away before he choked."

Sebastian smiles — it's small like a treasure chest being cracked open, the first glimpse of gold, and Elliott's breath catches.

 _Oh dear,_ he thinks. This is becoming a habit. It's not the first time Elliott's seen a smile that caught in his chest like light refracting, but in the city he would simply invite them for a drink, dazzle them with words, let the night stretch its colours to infinite possibilities.

The rules feel different, here — and he came here to _write_. His last handful of relationships have been brief and dramatic, rushed through like wine that's drunk too fast and too soon and never allowed to breathe, because he was so sure he needed something different.

"I should, er," Sebastian says. "I told Sam I'd meet him by the river."

"Of course! Don't let me keep you," Elliott says, and silently wonders if his life is too full of writing for anything else to fit or if it's all just negative space, waiting to be chiselled away.

"I'll be rooting for you in the ice fishing," Sebastian says, shooting him a look through his eyelashes that Elliott could write sonnets about, and slopes off.

Elliott watches him go, watching the colours in the shadow of his footprints, and rolls the taste of potential around his mouth.

\---

A few days later, and the windows of the beach shack are steamed up. Sebastian doesn't really think about it, as he approaches across the snow-speckled sand — if asked would have shrugged and said something about winter and poor insulation and single glazing, probably, the little knowledge he's picked up from his mom talking — and there's no hesitation between his knock and Elliott calling for him to come in.

He really should have thought about it.

"Sorry if it's a little humid in here," Elliot says, pressing a towel to his neck. "I've been doing a few indoor exercises, since it's too cold to really go out."

"Er," says Sebastian. Elliot flops the towel over his bare shoulder and smooths back the few tendrils of hair that have escaped from the bun knotted high on his head. Sebastian swallows.

"Are you alright? You look a little flushed," Elliott says. His trousers are riding low on his hips. He's not wearing a shirt.

"The cold," Sebastian says, holding onto the door frame with a white-knuckled grip.

"Ah, of course. Come in, come in," Elliott beckons, turning away as Sebastian slithers across the threshold and pulls the door shut behind him. "Did you come all this way in the snow just to see me?"

"I — yeah. No. I needed to get out of the house."

"Ah," Elliott says, again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Sebastian says, studying his shoes for a moment before looking up again. He casts around for something to say, anything to drag his thoughts away from the black hole of malignant disappointment he left behind. "It's pretty bare in here," he observes. It doesn't seem to have changed much since last season; the same bonsai tree near the door, the same weird picture on the wall, the same desk where he watched Elliott disappear into his own thoughts, something luminous in his face, and felt that first tug low in his stomach, the urge to follow. He had panicked and ran away.

The pile of paper beside the writing pad seems a lot higher, though.

"I came here to live the simple life," Elliott says, pulling on a button-down shirt.

Sebastian frowns. "Huh. I've never seen you without a tie," he points out. _Until now_ , a treacherous part of his brain points out, and then he's thinking about Elliott's bare arms again.

"Alas, certain standards are intrinsic to my very nature," Elliott says, light and easy, and perhaps some part of him is itching for a fight, bad code sending commands at the wrong target, but Sebastian narrows his eyes and doesn't let it drop.

"You have a _piano_ ," he says.

"What is life without music?" Elliott deflects.

Sebastian makes a noise low in his throat, involuntary and annoyed, some absurd stubbornness determined to scrap this out to its roots. Elliott looks at him, hard and piercing, and then sighs with such a dramatic air that Sebastian feels slightly embarrassed.

"Did you come here to pick a fight with me? I'm afraid I've always been a bit of a coward," Elliott says, a precise arrow to the balloon of Sebastian's anger, and Sebastian deflates.

"Sorry," he says, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "I — I'm having a bad day."

Elliott shrugs, an elegant lift of one shoulder, and Sebastian feels slightly sick, too many emotions, too much of a day; he thought coming to see Elliott would make everything easier, not more complicated.

"Perhaps I am a fraud," Elliott says, undoing the knot of his bun and letting his hair tumble. "Or perhaps a person's own sweeping declarations of who they are can only ever be a very flat way of looking at the truth."

Sebastian closes his eyes, and leans back against the doorframe. He should have just gone and chain-smoked up at the railroad again. His thoughts, self-sabotaging as ever, think about what he would like Elliott to do; to be standing right in front of him when he opens his eyes, to lean close and kiss him so soft and slow and insistent that there's no room for his mouth to make any more mistakes.

"It must be so easy for you," Sebastian's mouth says, like an idiot. "You just smile and everyone likes you—"

"I made a choice," Elliott says. "To be nice, and to smile at everyone, I mean. I wasn't always like this."

"Really?" Sebastian says, opening his eyes.

"I was somewhat shallow," Elliot says. He's standing next to the piano, looking refined and complicated and tidy again — two odd things out in the bleak simplicity of the old cabin. Sebastian, contrarily, feels a little less out of place. "My friends and I had, ah... an impatience with people who weren't within our circle." He looks like he wants to say more, but his mouth twists and he looks as sick as Sebastian felt a minute ago.

Sebastian thinks about Sam, and Abigail, and then everybody else in town. The way his entire spine goes tense and horrible when he's in a crowd of more than two people. "Hm," he says, and then, "So you moved here to be, what, a better person?"

"No," Elliott says, but he sounds ponderous. "No, I decided to stop being awful to people just because they didn't meet some imagined standard a long time ago. It was perhaps never truly 'me', just the amalgamation of the people I admired and wished to be, the people I'd fought to become close to and thought that meant it was worth it... no kind of excuse, really. We're all who we choose to be, moment to moment."

 _Fuck,_ Sebastian thinks. He had just wanted a break from feeling like the family disappointment. To spend time with someone who always looks delighted to see him.

Elliott sighs, sharp and final. "Apologies. I've been feeling very introspective recently. Would you like a drink?"

"Uh, coffee?" Sebastian says, startled by the change of temperature. "I don't really drink—"

"Ah, yes, that's not your vice, is it?" Elliot says, but he doesn't sound judgemental, just like it's a piece of information he had stored away and finally found a use for. "Hmm. No coffee, I'm afraid," he says, picking through the cupboards. "I've grown too dependent on Gus and his masterful machine. Tea?"

"Sure," Sebastian says, watching him.

It's not silent, in the cabin: the snow has ruthlessly smothered the outside but he can still hear the whisper of the waves not far away, the kettle hissing as Elliott peers into a mug he found at the back of the cupboard, the hum of the electric heater near his bed.

It should be nice. Companionable. Usually he's totally fine with silence.

"How's the writing going?" Sebastian asks, just to break it. There's still a weird tension in the air, and Sebastian knows it's his fault.

"Very well!" Elliott says, flashing a warm flare of a smile at him before turning back to the tea. "My protagonist is roaming the wilds of an ancient underground city, and soon he'll meet the creature who changes everything. It's — well, it's not the novel I thought I'd be writing, but I find myself enjoying it immensely."

"Thanks," Sebastian says as Elliott hands him his tea, their fingers brushing, warm and dry and solid. "Am I still in it?" he asks, looking up through his eyelashes.

Elliott's mouth quirks, mock-apologetic. "I'm afraid your character was merely an introduction to the story. I sent him off somewhere safer."

Sebastian looks down at his mug, breathes in the steam. "That's fair. He's a coward."

He can feel Elliott looking at him. "I believe he's capable of far more than he knows," Elliott says, and Sebastian makes the mistake of looking up.

 _That's... not fair._ Sometimes Elliott looks like he wants to trace the lines of Sebastian's mouth with his fingers and capture them in words.

Sebastian really wishes he would.

"Would you mind if I did some work, while you were here? I'm suddenly feeling very creative," Elliott says, and Sebastian drops his chin just to hide how red his cheeks suddenly are.

"Of course," Sebastian says, studying his tea. There are bits in it. "I can go—?"

"In this weather? I must insist you stay," Elliott says, and Sebastian... does. He holds his tea with both hands and watches the snow drift over the ocean, listening to the scratch of pen on paper and the creaks of the cabin as the snow settles heavier, and thinks about why he wants to get out of this town so desperately. The reasons seem less distinct, these days.

\---

Pelican Town has never seemed like a community of demonstrative affection, but Elliott strongly believes in being the change he wishes to see.

"You've had too much cinnamon nog," Leah says.

"I've had one mug, and I'm drunk on life," Elliott corrects, and lunges forward to kiss her cheek before she can move.

"Your face is so cold!" she shrieks, swatting him away, but she grins at him when he's safely back on the other side of the table. "You need to warm up before you attack everyone here."

Elliott eats a peppermint candy cane instead, and launches himself into the Feast of the Winter Star with the utter determination to greet everyone who will speak to him with a kiss on the cheek. He can't quite remember _why_ , but his heart is light and full of joy and honestly, why not?

Gus insists on kissing both cheeks, and claps a gloriously warm hand on Elliott's shoulder. Shane blushes. Pam laughs, full-throated, and calls him 'kid'. Demetrius frowns when he swoops down to Maru (who returns a kiss on his own cheek, and smiles brightly), but his eyebrows gain a curious crease when Elliott descends on him next. Robin gets surprisingly flustered. And Sebastian — well. Sebastian lifts his chin, his jaw set hard like a challenge as Elliott approaches, and Elliott would like to think he's daring him to kiss him full on the mouth but it's probably a warning.

What's life without a little risk?

"Sebastian," Elliott says, as warm as he can make it when he can't feel his nose, and spreads his palms like a question. Everyone else's response to that has been to lean in without moving their feet, place a hand on his waist or his shoulder or his arm, and let him brush his lips against their cheek with patient acceptance.

They flow towards each other. Sebastian steps close, into the space between Elliott's hands, and Elliott's arm falls around Sebastian's waist as natural as a tree branch bending to the wind. It's effortless to press his mouth to the corner of Sebastian's jaw; effortless to feel the way Sebastian sways into him, the stutter in his ribs under Elliott's palm, the encircling warmth as they press close for just a breath.

Sebastian keeps his head down when Elliott unfurls, and Elliott can't stop himself from looking around, half-hoping someone's noticed whatever that was just to prove it really happened, but not even Leah is paying attention to him anymore.

A gift just for him, then.

"Hey, can we talk?" Sebastian says, looking up with the most delectable flush to his cheeks. _Just the cold_ , some terrible part of Elliott tries to point out, and gets flicked away. "By the tree?"

"Of course! Lead the way," Elliott says. Despite its size and the way it's clearly the centre of the festival, no one is near it; everyone's either still gathered around the tables or are wandering around, enjoying the novelty of having nothing to do. Sebastian crouches down, reaching over the wrapped boxes to pick up one that's wide and deep and looks — although he's holding it with two hands — very light.

"So," Sebastian says, straightening up. "I'm your secret gift-giver this year."

"How fortunate!" Elliott says, and something flits across Sebastian's face.

"Er. Well. Actually, Maru got you, but she was complaining that she didn't know you or what you liked, so... I offered to swap," Sebastian says, not quite meeting his eye.

"You're very kind," Elliott says, pressing a hand to his chest like he's worried the warmth of it might spill out, and takes the parcel. It _is_ light, and when he unsticks the paper he finds a box, in the same green as his favourite tie, with a lid that fastens on one side with a black ribbon.

He opens it, careful and reverent, and draws a sharp breath when he sees the feather that's pinned down by the sprung clip inside; it's green and blue and purple and exquisite.

"It's a pen," Sebastian points out, sweetly unnecessary. "And the box file, I mean, you've got all those papers on your writing desk, and every time I come in I think the draft is going to sweep them all away, so..." he trails off, shrugs.

Elliott stares at him, his ribs so full and warm and tight that he fears they might buckle, and swallows.

"It's perfect," he manages, only slightly strangled. "I'm buoyed by your faith that there's anything worth saving in those pages."

Sebastian looks up at him, through his eyelashes, and this, here — there's no mistaking the want in his eyes, like someone's held a mirror up between them.

 _My goodness_ , Elliott thinks.

A shriek of laughter cuts through. One of the town's children is running past with a present the size of his head clutched in his hands, and the blonde one that Sebastian plays pool with is chasing after him, laughing despite the murderous intent in his eyes. It's like a vignette of village life, and for the first time in almost a year Elliott wishes this could be back in the city; where all noises are just background, where you can have a private moment in the crush of a crowd.

The moment, alas, is gone, but Sebastian's still here. Conversation, then, must suffice.

"Who did you have? Before you swapped with dearest Maru?"

"Gus," Sebastian says — who had received something complicated and electronic and that he seemed politely baffled by. Elliott is deeply glad it wasn't for him; the salt and the humidity in his cabin means everything metallic turns to rust within days.

"What about you?" Sebastian says, nodding his chin towards the tree, his expression shuttering like he's drawing away, and Elliott has the huge and absurd desire to make him laugh.

"Ah, my giftee was old George. I gave him the most beautiful shell I have ever stumbled across, a magnificent spiral of an ancient creature captured in iridescence, a masterpiece of the ocean's shape and colour," Elliott performs, his chin lifted, and holds his laughter down deep even as Sebastian's mouth quirks. "I laid it before him like a knight laying a dragon's head before a king, with all the finest compliments of the season. George studied my gracious tribute without a flicker of expression and then said, and I quote, 'Hrump.'"

Sebastian snorts. Elliott allows himself a twitch of a smile. "But all was not lost! Dear Evelyn admired it most sweetly and promised me cookies if I ever dropped by, so I think I did fairly well," he says, his voice dropping out of its oratory octaves, and basks in the way Sebastian is looking at him; like he's an oddball, sure, but one he hopes will stick around.

All in all, today's been pretty good.

\---

The year has only just turned over, but it's one of those early spring days that feel like summer, cloudless and dazzling and like the sun is soaking through your skin, your eyelids, chasing out the cold.

He's been spending too much time with Elliott. Poetry is infecting him.

Sebastian knocks on the shack door anyway, like he has the handful of times since he first stayed for tea, and lets himself in. "Hey, are you busy?" he calls, even before his eyes adjust to the shadows and he can see Elliott sitting at his writing desk, caught half-turning towards the door. "How's writing going?"

"Wonderfully!" Elliott says. "But I could use a break."

"Oh," Sebastian says prematurely, and then, "Oh! Cool. I was, er, going to sit on the docks for a while, if you wanted to come."

"I would love to," Elliott says, smiling in the way that makes Sebastian's ribcage feel too small, and completes the turn out of his chair with a flourish into standing, adjusting the scarf around his neck as he goes. "Lead on."

They walk side by side, sand crunching under their feet, and the air is fresh and cold and iodine-sharp. It's not Sebastian's favourite weather but something made him want to be outside, to stretch his fingers in the sunlight when the warmth feels rare and wonderful instead of horrible and burning.

Elliott is looking out at the ocean when Sebastian glances at him, disinclined to talk, and this, too, is a gift they've built between them; the easy silence, the quiet companionship. They both spend a lot of time in their own heads, but Sebastian plays Elliott's piano while he's working, or plots out his next _Solarion Chronicles_ quest, or watches the ocean and finds himself, strangely, not wanting to be anywhere else.

It would be perfect except for the thin thread of nervousness in his chest, but that's hardly new; this ease between them has settled around it, like a tree swallowing a wire fence planted too close. He keeps looking at Elliott and waiting for him to make the first move, to step a little closer, to bridge the space between them. Elliott, so far, keeps smiling gently and looking at his mouth and then interrupting himself, like there's some reason to _not_ do this.

(Sebastian keeps imagining it, playing out the fantasy, like that might make it easier. It does not.)

 _Two cowards,_ Sebastian thinks, and only hates one of them for it.

A flock of seagulls take off as they clonk onto the jetty, their honks cutting through the peaceful sloshing of the waves, but they're out of hearing by the time he and Elliott reach the end of the docks and sit down on the sun-warmed boards. Sebastian sits with his legs crossed, knees wide, everything above the water, but Elliott takes off his scarf and then his shoes, sits with his knees up in order to roll up his trousers, and then lowers his feet into the sea. It's high tide, the water lapping close around the pillars of the jetty, and Elliott hisses when his skin slips under the surface. It must be freezing.

" _Why_ ," Sebastian says, more horror than a question, staring at his bare feet beneath the water. His flesh's going to turn blue.

Elliott shrugs, an elegant lift of one shoulder. "There's nothing better than feeling connected to nature," he says, and leans back on his hands, spreading his knees wider as he kicks lazily at the water, and his thigh brushes close to Sebastian's. Sebastian relaxes by an inch, pressing their legs more firmly together, and Elliott doesn't move again.

It's chaste and ridiculous and the opposite of Sebastian's fantasies that flash, hot and bright, through his mind when he thinks about Elliott for too long. He doesn't know how to split the difference.

"How's the book going?" Sebastian asks, instead of all the things he wants to say. Maybe he should take Elliott up the hills that overlook Zuzu City sometime, where there's nothing but the lights to distract him.

"I keep editing previous chapters instead of plowing onwards," Elliott sighs. His eyes are closed, when Sebastian looks at him, his head tilted back and glowing in the sunlight. "The descriptions flow out of me like water from a tap. It's the actions I struggle with."

Sebastian glares at him, purely because Elliott can't see it.

Elliott opens his eyes, blinks a few times, and catches Sebastian's eye. "When it's finished, I think I'll dedicate it to the magician from the mountains," he says, and it takes Sebastian all of three seconds to realise who that is. He feels his cheeks warm, presses his lips together in an attempt to hide his smile, but the way Elliott's looking at him makes him think he's probably failed.

"Cool," Sebastian says, looking at the sea again, feeling anything but. Warmth is soaking into his clothes, gathering heat like coal, but the stretch of his skin that's pressed close to Elliott feels like the sun has slipped in between them.

A bird squawks, somewhere overhead, and Sebastian's gaze drifts upwards, up into the endless blue. He stares at nothing until he realises, no, he's focused on a speck drifting down, soft and slow, and Sebastian follows it until it snags like a sunbeam in Elliott's hair.

"There's a feather in your hair," Sebastian says, and without thinking he reaches over to remove it — and then Elliott is watching him and his hand kind of lingers, because that was a dumb move but now he doesn't want to pull away. Something about the way Elliott's looking at him makes him feel pinned, caught, hopeful.

Elliott wraps his hand around Sebastian's arm, hot and careful, and for a moment Sebastian thinks he's going to gently push him away — but instead he turns his head, and presses a closed-lip kiss to the inside of his wrist. Sebastian feels it echoing in the weirdest places — the pit of his stomach, the back of his neck, the arch of his left foot — and Elliott looks at him like he's something delicately wrapped and exquisite, a rare book he's been dying to read that's fallen, already open, into his hands.

Sebastian's heart is already pounding but it changes gear, goes deep and purring. He wets his lips, absent and involuntary, and tastes salt.

"Sebastian," Elliott says, very softly, like this is something delicate, like Sebastian would be cowardly enough to be pull away if he poured all the heat in his gaze between them, and lets Sebastian's hand drop to rest on his shoulder as Elliott reaches over, curls his hand around the back of Sebastian's neck, draws him close.

Elliott kisses him, slow and sure and insistent, and Sebastian surges into it like the tide.

Elliott makes a noise that Sebastian feels all the way down his spine, and the hand behind his neck tightens convulsively before sliding up into his hair, long fingers cold against his scalp. His fantasies have never settled on how this would go: urgent and breathless, or if Elliott would kiss as refined and considered as he does everything else — but it's somehow both, the heat of Elliott's mouth flooding through him, the drag of his lips against Sebastian's precise as the stroke of a pen.

Sebastian finds his own hands in Elliott's hair, determined and tangled, and angles his mouth to pour himself into it. He feels like something's shifted — calibrated, some distant voice taunts, rewritten by Elliott's fingers — the tension between them turning molten and flooding between their mouths, their fingers, their palms.

"El," Sebastian gasps, and Elliott groans.

Seagulls bellow somewhere nearby, and the world rushes back in. This — the docks, the beach, the light — is too public for all the things he wants to do, and Sebastian breaks away because the alternative is to swing himself into Elliott's lap.

He doesn't go far, though. He can feel Elliott's breath across his mouth, the silence suspended between them like something bright and hopeful.

Elliott darts his tongue across his lip. "I am, for once, lost for words," he says, and Sebastian laughs.


End file.
